Trapped (13 page)

“You damned right, he’s right. You obviously have a blind spot as big as Jupiter.”

“So, now, Nottingham is threatening me. He said that if I don’t give him custody of this baby, joint custody, he’s going to bring down Nick and my dad.”

Luke cocked his head. “Your dad. He’s involved with this, too?”

I shrugged my shoulder. “I don’t really know. I mean, the video was on my dad’s computer, so I don’t know what that means. I guess I need to find out more.”

“Oh, god. Well, okay, so Nottingham knows. The first thing you do is clean up that phone. I have no idea how you’re going to do that, because those devices are microscopic. I have no idea how you’re going to find it. But, one thing’s for sure, you can’t get rid of that phone, because you don’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”

“That goes without saying,” I said. “And, well, I told him that I had dirt on him, and that if he decided to play hard ball, that I would bring him down. When I said that, I think that I was onto something. I saw a bit of fear in his eyes when I said it. A flicker of fear. I was bluffing, of course, but I saw something in his eyes that makes me think that I really could bring him down if it came to that.”

Luke shook his head. “Okay. Looks like we’re going to have to fight fire with fire. I don’t approve of this, of course. But we have to find something on him.” He shook his head again. “Nothing else can really be done. We’re completely backed into a corner, Dalilah, because of you. I hope you’re happy.”

I tried not to panic at Luke’s words. He was clearly angry, and I hoped that he didn’t really mean what he was saying.

I breathed in and out, in and out. I had to calm down. I was feeling panicky about the situation, and Luke’s words made it all that much worse. Not that I blamed him for saying these things. I knew that he was frustrated. I didn’t blame him. But I needed him to be on my side. No matter what I did, no matter how morally wrong I was, I needed him to tell me that he could understand why I would do these things. I needed him to forgive me, and understand how badly I wanted to change.

I felt a sense of keen relief, when he came over to me, and took my hand. “Dalilah,” he said calmly. “I’m frustrated at the situation. I’m not going to tell you that you weren’t wrong in what you did, because you clearly were. But what’s done is done. We have go to forward. We have to go forward, and hopefully your dad and Nick can help with this.”

I smiled. Luke wasn’t going to leave me over this. He wasn’t happy, but it seemed that he would continue to be on my side, and that meant the absolute world to me.

Chapter

My mom, dad, Nick and Scotty arrived at Serena’s home at 6 PM. I helped Serena prepare the food, and Luke went out and got some good scotch for Nick and my dad, along with some good wine for Scotty and my mom. I actually enjoyed helping Serena cook. It was relaxing, really, and I desperately needed to relax.

“So,” Serena said to me. “I guess I need to make myself scarce, huh, after dinner? I mean, since you don’t want me to know what’s going on.”

“I’m so sorry. This is your home. I wish that I could tell you, but it’s just too risky.”

She nodded. “Well, at any rate, I’ll have the chance to meet your family, which is a good thing. I’m happy about that.”

“Thanks so much for understanding,” I said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve already made plans to see a friend of mine and catch up with her. It’s not a problem.”

My mom, dad, Nick and Scotty
arrived at 6. They came in, and had a seat, and Luke got all of them a drink.

“Thanks, Luke,” my dad said, “from the tone of your call today, I think that we’re all going to need this.”

“Well,” Luke said. “You probably will. At any rate, we have some awesome food to eat. We have a lot to talk about, but after we eat.”

Serena smiled. “We’re like Italians. Everything is going to go down better after a good meal.”

The dinner couldn’t have gone better. Everything was delicious, and my dad and everybody tried to valiantly make small talk and get to know Serena. But, through it all, there was severe tension in the air. It could be cut like a knife.

After the vegan brownie dessert, and some after-dinner drinks, Serena excused herself. “Well, it’s been awesome to meet all of you, but I have a friend to meet tonight.”

Everybody stood up and gave her a hug. “It’s been great meeting you, Serena,” my dad said. “Thanks so much for being such a great hostess and welcoming us into your home. It really means a lot to us.”

Everyone else said similar things to Serena, and she left with a smile.

After she left, my dad led off the charge. “Okay, now, Dalilah, let’s not beat around the bush, here. You called us here, and you obviously have something on your mind. And, judging by your recent meetings that you have called with us, I would have to say that what’s going on is probably something that’s not so great. To say the least.”

“Yes,” I said. And then I launched into everything about how Nottingham was blackmailing me. I didn’t have to tell them about the rest – about my hacking and all that, because, of course, they already knew that story.

My dad was shaking his head. “Okay. Well, then, we have a situation on our hands, don’t we? To say the least.”

“Of course,” I said. “Listen, dad, I’m not all that clear, though. You were in on the Paul Lucas thing. Of that, I’m relatively certain. But what did you do? Were you just aware that he was doing it, or were you actively involved in planning it?”

My dad was quiet. “I was involved in planning it. Nick and I planned it together. I got my security firm involved in it. It was my computer that we used to record it. The entire plan was put together by Nick and me, side by side. So, if Nick is going down for this, I am too.”

Oh, god, I didn’t know that my dad’s neck was this much on the line.
“I see,” I said, and then looked around the room. My mom’s face showed no surprise, so I guess she knew. Scotty’s face showed no surprise, either.

They all knew about it. Of course. The four of them were tight, and they all formed a very strong circle of trust. They knew that nobody in that group would ever breathe a word about it.

I felt bad. If it weren’t for me, that whole thing would remain buried. But, it kept coming up. It kept coming up, because of me. It should have remained buried with the bones of Paul Lucas.

I felt so guilty.

My dad shook his head. “What’s done is done. Okay, then, it’s time to bring out the big guns. We have no choice. You said that you thought that Nottingham was up to no good. From what you told me about him, and what Nick knows about him, I would think that you’re probably correct about that.”

“Where to begin, though, dad? How do we prove it?”

“I’ll get my security firm on it,” my dad said. “And hire a private investigator. There’s going to be some shake-downs coming, I can sense it. I know some people who can get things done. They get things done within the bounds of what’s legal, but they also can do things which aren’t. They were involved in this Paul Lucas mess in the first place. They can out-Nottingham Nottingham, if that makes any sense at all.”

I smiled. “Dad, thank-“

“No, Dalilah. I almost hate to get my security firm on it, because a part of me wants you to learn your lesson the hard way. But now that you’ve gotten all of us involved with your mess, it’s time to come off the sidelines. We’re going to come off the sidelines to clean up your mess, and cover up ours.”

“Dalilah,” Nick asked. “You know how I feel about what you did, hacking and threatening me. No need to revisit that. We do need to find out, though, if you have any suspicions at all that Nottingham was up to no good.”

“Well, yes,” I said, and I told them about the German conversation that I overheard. “I was going to try to hack him myself and find out about that trade, but I decided not to. But there is that. That’s the only thing, though, that I heard that would make me think that he’s doing something illegal.”

“That’s a good place to start,” Nick said. “Have somebody look at all the trades that he has done, and see how close these trades have come to any kind of big announcements in the news. But, since that would only be circumstantial evidence, we’re going to need to go further to prove that there’s anything illegal.”

“No,” my dad said. “The illegality ends here. We aren’t going to hack him. I won’t ask my security firm to do that, even though they can. I think that the best way to approach this would be to find these possibly illegal trades, and
make
Nottingham think that we have definitive proof that he’s doing something wrong. If that’s what has happened, here. There’s no guarantee for that, because, well, Dalilah’s information is so vague, it’s impossible to know if that’s what Nottingham is guilty of.”

“Dad,” I said. “We need something more definitive. If your security firm can do that, then I think that they should.”

Luke gave me a look. I just looked back at him. I felt bad, I did, but I wanted an insurance policy. Simply telling Nottingham that I had information without having something to back it up would be folly, in my opinion.

“No,” my dad said. “We aren’t going to do that. We’re going to find things out legitimately, or not at all.”

Nick chimed in. “Ryan, we need to talk about this. We’re all involved in this. At least, you and I have our necks on the line, here. I think that we need to take a vote on this. I personally am with Dalilah. I think that we need to get your firm to hack if they have to, to get actual hard information about any kind of illegal trade that he has made. If that’s what is going to be our ace, here. There’s no guarantee that this is going to be the ace, of course, but who knows what we can find if we really get looking at his hard drive.”

My dad was shaking his head. “I hate doing this. I thought that I was out of the illegal stuff a long time ago. I’m getting pulled back into it, though, and I don’t like it.”

“I know you don’t like it, Ryan,” Nick said. “But Dalilah is right. We need an insurance policy here.”

Dad looked at my mom. “What do you think, beautiful? We do illegal acts to cover up our previous illegal act? Or we try to do things legitimately and let the chips fall where they may?”

My mom sighed. “Ryan, as much as I think that we should do things legally, I know that your security firm is trained in this sort of thing. They’re pros. Let them do what they’re going to do, and, this way, if Nottingham calls our bluff, we have something concrete to show him.”

My dad looked defeated. “Okay, let’s take a vote. We’re all in this.”

“I’m not going to vote, of course,” Luke said. “I mean, I don’t have a dog in this fight, really. Except, of course, the fact that it’s my child who is at the middle of all of this.”

“Then you have a dog in the fight,” my dad said. “You get a vote, too.”

I groaned, inwardly. I knew how Luke was going to vote. I mean, I wasn’t certain, but I had a feeling that he was going to vote for doing things dad’s way. So, for doing things dad’s way, there was Luke and my dad. My mom seemed to be on the side of doing things the hacking way, and Nick did, too. I was clearly on Nick and mom’s side.

Which left Scotty. I assumed that she would vote with
Nick
, but, who knows? Perhaps she, too, was afraid of things going awry if we did things the hacking way.

We took a vote. To my utter surprise, my dad was the only one who voted to not hack. Everyone else, including Luke, voted to have the security firm hack if they had to.

“Okay,” Ryan said. “I’m clearly outvoted, here. Now, you all know the risks. Nottingham isn’t going to be easy to hack, and, if he finds out he is being hacked, he’s going to throw the book at all of us. But, I understand the reason why you guys voted in the way that you did. We do need an insurance policy, and there’s more of a chance that this whole thing will go south if there isn’t an insurance policy than if there is. So, then, okay. I’m going to have my security firm do whatever it takes to prove that Nottingham has dirty hands.”

We spent the rest of the evening planning it all out.

T
hat night, after everyone had left, Luke and I spent some time cleaning up the kitchen.
We worked in silence for awhile, but I finally brought up the inevitable subject.

“You voted with Nick and everyone against my dad. While I love you for doing that, I was wondering why you would? You were always adamant that I shouldn’t do that.”

Luke sighed. “Dalilah, I’m trying very hard to reconcile that vote with my own conscience. I’m telling myself that it’s different the way that your dad wants to do it, because it’s not you doing the hacking. It’s the security firm. That’s not a great distinction, but that’s the one that I’m telling myself.”

I nodded. “Well, that sounds like a good distinction to me.”

“It’s not. Illegal is illegal is illegal. But, at the same time, I agree with Nick and everyone that we’re going to have to have insurance with that man. I just don’t think that bluffing is going to do it. He’s too intelligent. Too devious. I just think that we have to fight fire with fire.”

“I love you, you know that? You surprise me sometimes, but in the best way.”

“Don’t love me for this,” Luke said. “This is my dirty side. The side that I don’t like. It was bad enough that I had to go into that fetish club with Serena, using a fake badge, but, this…this is just wrong. I wish that there was something else that can be done, and, up until the point where Nottingham started blackmailing you, I really believed it was just going to be two lawyers going at it. To tell you the truth, I think that the fact that he’s getting down in the mud is what tipped me over. You can’t bring a knife to a gun fight, as you said before.”

I held my breath. He clearly was still angry with me.

Give him time. He’ll come around.

After we did the dishes and cleaned everything up, we sat on the couch together. I rubbed my foot on his crotch playfully, but he gently pushed it away. “I’m sorry, Dalilah, but I’m not in the mood right now.”

I felt rebuffed, but tried not to show my hurt.

Then he rubbed my foot, and tried to smile. “Too much stress. Let’s go to bed. I somehow have to try to concentrate on getting my art career off the ground, so that I can at least realize a return on my investment. I don’t know how I can possibly concentrate on that, though, with all of this nonsense hanging over our heads.”

I took a deep breath. “Luke?” I said in a small voice.

“Yes, Dalilah?”

“I made the right decision, right? I mean, in taking the progesterone so that we could keep Olivia?”

Luke looked startled. “Oh, honey, why would you even ask that? Of course you did. That was the only decision to make. That was the best decision you made.” Then he shook his head. “But those other decisions. I just don’t know. I mean, I know that it all was done for me. But there had to be a better way of going about it. There just had to be.”

“20/20 hindsight,” I said. “Looking back, I think that I made some of the dumbest decisions imaginable. But, at the time, I thought that these decisions were good. I guess I really wasn’t thinking about how underhanded Nottingham was going to turn out to be.”

Luke kissed my forehead gently. “So intelligent, yet so naïve at the same time. In a way, a weird way, this makes me actually love you more. You don’t always see how dirty people are. I mean, you knew that Nottingham was dirty, but you didn’t know how much. I love that you still seem to have a part of you that’s optimistic about human nature, no matter what happens.”

I sighed with relief. So far, Luke and I were hanging together.

We might have been hanging by a thread, but, as long as we still had even that thread between us, there was a chance that we could get through this.